e remark of Counsellor Pippin,
who now, peering over the shoulders of the youth, exhibited his face for
the first time during the controversies of the day. Pippin was
universally known to be possessed of an admirable scent for finding out
a danger when it is well over, and when the spoils, and not the toils,
of the field are to be reaped. His appearance at this moment had the
effect of arousing, in some sort, the depressed spirits of those around
him, by recalling to memory and into exercise the jests upon his
infirmities, which long use had made legitimate and habitual.
Calculating the probable effect of such a joke, Munro, without seeming
to observe the interruption, looking significantly round among the
assembly, went on to say--

"If you have been thus assaulted, young man, and I am not disposed to
say it is not as you assert, it can not have been by any of our village,
unless it be that Counsellor Pippin and his fellow Hob were the persons:
they were down, now I recollect, at the Catcheta pass, somewhere about
the time; and I've long suspected Pippin to be more dangerous than
people think him."

"I deny it all--I deny it. It's not true, young man. It's not true, my
friends; don't believe a word of it. Now, Munro, how can you speak so?
Hob--Hob--Hob--I say--where the devil are you? Hob--say, you rascal, was
I within five miles of the Catcheta pass to-day?" The negro, a black of
the sootiest complexion, now advanced:--

"No, maussa."

"Was I yesterday?"

The negro put his finger to his forehead, and the lawyer began to fret
at this indication of thought, and, as it promised to continue,
exclaimed--

"Speak, you rascal, speak out; you know well enough without reflecting."
The slave cautiously responded--

"If maussa want to be dere, maussa dere--no 'casion for ax Hob."

"You black rascal, you know well enough I was not there--that I was not
within five miles of the spot, either to-day, yesterday, or for ten days
back!"

"Berry true, maussa; if you no dere, you no dere. Hob nebber say one
ting when maussa say 'noder."

The unfortunate counsellor, desperate with the deference of his
body-servant, now absolutely perspired with rage; while, to the infinite
amusement of all, in an endeavor to strike the pliable witness, who
adroitly dodged the blow, the lawyer, not over-active of frame, plunged
incontinently forward, and paused not in his headlong determination
until he measured himself at length upon the gro